Important Question (was Re: Stupid Question of the Week)
Saul Epstein 
Thu, 06 Nov 1997 09:19:10 -0600

At 06:19 AM 11/6/97 M, Pat wrote:

>Here goes:  What is a fricative?  Perhaps for the benefit of those of us who 
>didn't pay attention in grammar classes (that were a thousand years ago), 
>some of these terms should be defined.  The conversation is interesting, but 
>I can't follow the terms used as I don't know what they mean.  It's like 
>another language.  I guess I should have paid attention.....

This is actually very important. All these terms should be defined in
general. For one thing, ones like "fricative" aren't grammatic, which means
that most people haven't been exposed to them at all. Most people are taught
some version of grammar in school as part of learning about their own
language or acquiring others. But it's rare for such classes to deal with
phonetics -- the study of linguistic sound. If your teacher has a native or
well-acquired accent and you have a good ear, you just pick up the sounds
and their rules unconsciously. Otherwise you don't.

But, to answer your question, a fricative is a consonant produced by
obstructing the flow of air enough that the passage of that air causes
audible friction. This distinguishes fricatives from stops (or, more
technically, "plosives") which completely stop the flow of air and then
release it, and from approximants which merely shape the air passage without
obstructing it.

These two terms distinguish _manner_ of articulation, one of a sound's
distinctive features. Other kinds of terms distinguish _place_ of
articulation. For instance, the t sound in many languages (though not
usually in English) is a voiceless dental stop, so called because it is
produced by the obstruction of air between the tip of the tongue and the
upper-front teeth. The th sound in "thought" is a voiceless dental
fricative: air is obstructed in the same place, but in a different manner.

All of this terminology has been growing for a long time, so the meanings of
individual terms can be a little shifty. Some of them have been the focus of
lively arguments, not all of which have ever been settled. What is probably
universally accepted is that the terms act as idealizations of kinds of
sounds. Normal speech involves aiming different parts of the articulatory
apparatus at each other at great speed, which means the sounds produced are
close enough to ideal to be understood, but not necessarily any closer. The
idealizations make description of a language's sounds possible, but don't
represent some ideal form of sound that speakers should strive for.

--
from Saul Epstein
liberty <at> uit <dot> net
www <dot> johnco <dot> cc <dot> ks <dot> us <slash> <tilde> sepstein
"Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi suraketca'."
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